Thursday, March 17, 2016

Spectre Argument about Trinity

From guest blogger, Shao.

The puzzle of Trinity is that God, Holy Ghost and Jesus are three different entities but are also considered one thing. How do we explain that three is one and one is three? I am thinking about a video game that I play regularly and it might help explain the problem. 

So in the game of DOTA (acronym for "Defense of the Ancient", a very popular esports), there is a character called Spectre, which is a ghost-like hero in the game. This hero's ultimate skill is called haunt, which she is able to create doppelgangers omnipresently on the whole battle field behind each enemy hero. All the doppelgangers share certain percentage of Spectre's primary attributes: like 30% of her strength, agility and intelligence. Plus, all the doppelgangers have certain percentage of the powers of from Specter's gears. So for instance, if Spectre has a gear called Radiance, which will dole holy damage every second to her nearby enemies, once she popped her ultimate skill, all her doppelgangers can also do that but just less powerful. Besides shared attributes and power, Spectre can instantly teleport to, or maybe in other words, reincarnates, one of her doppelgangers and thus the doppelganger that she reincarnated suddenly became her. This hero is very powerful due to her ultimate skill that she can be omnipresent during the battle and all her doppelgangers can also be herself. 

I think this is a good analogy to the Trinity problem. First, God and Jesus are distinct entities just like Spectre and her doppelgangers. Additionally, although Jesus is capable of certain divine power, like cure a blind woman or heal the wounds, Jesus seems to be less powerful than God due to the fact that he was crucified by the Romans and if he is indeed God he should be invincible.  Similarily, Spectre's doppelgangers are weaker than her and do less damage, and they are not able to actively use any skills of Spectre, although passive skills and passive power (by saying passive I mean the player does not actively click any keys on the keyboard and the skill and power just have the effects automatically) of the gears still apply to doppelgangers. So, since Jesus resurrected after his crucifixion, it feels a lot like Spectre is able to instantly reincarnate to her doppelgangers and makes one of them her. 

So basically, I think my analogy suggests that it might be the case that Jesus is like a doppelganger of God that he shares certain attributes and power of God but at the same time less powerful than God. However, he is still God due to the fact that God can just become Jesus anytime he wants to and makes Jesus God himself. I think this analogy solves Christina's argument that Clark Kent and Superman is just one person but Jesus and God seems to be different entities that they can talk to each other. 

1 comment:

Unknown said...

While DOTA is a great example of a possible circumstance for a less powerful, but similarly consciousness being I do not think that it solves the problem of God and Jesus. If Jesus is God then they must be equally powerful. The possibility of Jesus not having the power/knowledge to do the same as god would make it clear that they are not the same. For example, I cannot say that if I am able to only have a 21 inch vertical jump and I am also able to only have a 16 inch vertical. Clearly I am not the same person with the same abilities or I have lied about what I am able to do. So by Jesus not being able to do something that god is able to do, even if they have the same consciousness makes them somehow not equivalent, as they should be in the holy trinity.